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1/17/2017

The Long Struggle For Women's Rights in America

protest for their rights. "We march
peacefully to send a message loud and clear – that women’s rights are human
rights and that defending the most marginalized among us means defending all of
us."

The Women’s March on Washington January 21, 2017 is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of women and allies to DC on the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Marches are also scheduled for almost every state capitol as well. This is a continuation of a struggle women have been dealing with for a very long time.

Along with echoing the 1963 civil rights demonstration where Martin Luther King Jr. first declared, “I have a dream,” the Women’s March on Washington has historical ties to the early suffrage movement.More than a century ago, thousands of suffragists gathered in DC on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration demanding the right to vote.

Organized by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade saw more than 5,000 marchers from around the country to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded,” according to the parade’s program. It was one of the first national efforts in the name of women’s suffrage, and it would take seven more years for women to secure the right to vote through the 19th Amendment.

3 comments:

Hello AM. It's Bouncin Barb from This & That As I Bounce Thru Life. I've gotten rid of that blog and started this new one. So now I'm called Bee "BB" Bee. It was so good to see a blog post from you. Hope all is well and hope to see you at my new blog, 50s, Fabulous and Forever A Jersey Girl

Enjoyed this post Anna, like always. The photos you find to share and the tidbits of information always seem to peak my curiosity.

Just so happens that this week I'm on Chapter 6 in a book I'm reading. The chapter shares tidbits of history about women, mainly in America. It's both appalling and inspiring. I like reading the vignettes.

The book and chapter are online in a free pdf. Here is the link: People's History

Chapter 6: "The Intimately Oppressed" which begins on page 102 is about women.

Here's a snippet about Anne Hutchinson from pp. 107 and 108. Maybe Anne led the first march...but with a horrific end. But, over 400 years later, her name and stand are not forgotten.

"Anne Hutchinson was put on trial twice: by the church for heresy, and by the government for challenging their authority. At her civil trial she was pregnant and ill, but they did not allow her to sit down until she was close to collapse. At her religious trial she was interrogated for weeks, and again she was sick, but challenged her questioners with expert knowledge of the Bible and remarkable eloquence. When finally she repented in writing, they were not satisfied. They said: 'Her repentance is not in her countenance.'

She was banished from the colony, and when she left for Rhode Island in 1638, thirty-five families followed her. Then she went to the shores of Long Island, where Indians who had been defrauded of their land thought she was one of their enemies; they killed her and her family. Twenty years later, the one person back in Massachusetts Bay who had spoken up for her during her trial, Mary Dyer, was hangedby the government of the colony, along with two other Quakers, for 'rebellion, sedition, and presumptuous obtruding themselves.' It remained rare for women to participate openly in public."

Thanks Carol for that descriptive overview. Yes, women's struggles here in the states as well as around the world is astonishing to recollect. I fear the current administration in D.C. is going to do all they can to set our hard earned progress back a hundred years with all their threats...such as fineing her and denying a woman the right to vote if she chooses of her own legal volition to have an abortion. They keep trying to convince the masses that this is not a "religious" matter but who do they think the fanatical right wing is convincing? Certainly not any one of faith who feels every human being has the right to believe what they want when it comes to who and what and how they worship?...as long as it is peaceful and is not forced on anyone else.